


The Angel Room - Vignettes from the Bunker: "Ballad"

by CatherineinNB



Series: The Angel Room [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Bunker Fic, Canon Compliant, Cooking, Domestic Fluff, Episode: s14e10 Nihilism, Fluff, Gen, Hey Jude, Music, Research, Season/Series 14, Season/Series 14 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 16:05:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18034793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatherineinNB/pseuds/CatherineinNB
Summary: Makael and Dean make a startling discovery about Michael.Author's Note: This takes place after "Nihilism," and before "Damaged Goods." I've decided to do a series of vignettes from around the Bunker as Makael recovers. Fun and fluff, but I'm also using it as an opportunity to address fandom stuff and meta from the series (see notes at bottom of the story). In this installment, I've taken the opportunity to show all the work that Sam and Co. did to try to help Dean in the approximate month between the events of "Nihilism" and "Damaged Goods." There's reaching out to allies, research, road trips, cooking, singing, and happiness in the midst of it all.





	The Angel Room - Vignettes from the Bunker: "Ballad"

**Author's Note:**

> See Author's Notes at end of text.

_**Ballad:**_  
As the days go on at the Bunker, there’s an unspoken urgency to everyone’s actions as they try to find a way to save Dean from Michael. There are innumerable searches of the archives, down to examinations of scraps of paper tucked into books and discovered in the bottom of file cabinets. Anything that might even possibly be a reference to anything archangel-related is double and triple checked.

Once the artifact that opens the portal to our universe recharges, Makael heads back to her Room and retrieves all of the books she’s obtained over the years since the Great Fall, all of which are angel-related (her way of staying connected with her kind, even as she was in hiding from her brothers and sisters). She downloads the entire contents of her cloud storage—scanned documents and photos of one-of-a-kind manuscripts—onto her laptop, and brings that as well. For good measure, she grabs her DVD copies of _Supernatural_ , Seasons 1-13, as well as digital copies of all the episodes of Season 14 to air thus far.

Castiel gets in touch with Aaron Bass, who travels to Berlin to see if any fragments of the Anzû tablet might have survived the air raids of WWII. Aaron’s Judah Initiative contacts are well-versed in the secret trade of Nazi-raided artifacts, especially those of the occult kind. They know of many objects that were supposedly destroyed during the Allied bombing of Berlin, but actually made it into the hands of private collectors. Despite several leads, and after two weeks of searching, Aaron comes up empty-handed—although he puts out some feelers to Argentina, to see if there might be any rumors about the tablet having landed there.

Dean declares that if that ends up being the case, they’ll definitely be getting in contact with Maritza, the pishtaco they allowed to return home to Peru, and have her follow up on any leads. She owes them her life, so he figures that she can be persuaded to run an errand for them in Argentina.

Meanwhile, Sam puts in a phone call to Ophelia Avila of the Rhode Island capitulum, to ask if she can search their records for anything archangel related. When she admits that no one left really has kept track of the contents of the Portsmouth hideaway—the legacies’ sole focus was keeping Yokoth contained—Sam takes a four day trip with Jack. He comes back hauling an enormous U-Haul full of the contents of Capitulum 7, with Ophelia’s blessing. When Makael asks about it, Sam tells her that he thinks Ophelia was just glad be able to to shed the last remnants of responsibility inherited from her crazy great-grandfather.

While Jack, Sam, and Makael comb through the contents of the Portsmouth chapter house and Makael’s library, Castiel and Dean do research into whether or not any of the other Men of Letters’ capitulums are still standing, in the hopes that they might have additional materials that could be of some use. They check in with other hunters, both from the AU and from their own world, to see if anyone might know any useful scraps of lore.

Nobody says anything directly, but everyone notices how haggard Dean is looking. How, sometimes, he’ll have to reach out to a nearby surface to steady himself, or he’ll flinch out of the blue, or how often he pauses mid-sentence to close his eyes, or rub his temples.

It’s incredibly painful to see his suffering. And if Makael feels that way, she can only imagine what the rest of them are feeling like—let alone Dean himself.

In the midst of it all, however, Makael discovers that she’s … happy. Happy in a way she doesn’t think she’s ever been before.

Being in the Throne Room with God? That was glorious … rapturous … euphoric. But it didn’t make her happy. And after she Fell, she … made due. She built herself a quiet little life. Kept to herself. Played human. Maybe someone would call the life she’d made “happy.” But she hadn’t really felt much about it at all.

Happiness, she decides, is something much more mundane than the Throne Room, and much more personal than the life she lived after the Fall. It’s about connection, and little moments, and its very mundanity is what makes it so beautiful. Happiness is a feeling she gets in her chest—a blossoming warmth that spreads through her whole being and makes her feel light inside of her bones.

And it’s triggered by so many little things: seeing Jack’s smile, the first taste of coffee to hit her tastebuds in the morning, hearing Castiel refer to her as “sister,” the smell of old ink and paper as she scans through books, the sound of Dean’s laugh (which is rare these days, and all the more precious for it), her intent conversations about the finer points of angelic lore with Sam.

She doesn’t realize at first just how happy she is: not until Castiel stops dead when he’s walking by her in the library as she’s curled up in a corner in one of the red leather chairs, and his eyes widen and fill with sudden emotion.

It’s only then that she realizes she’s been humming to herself.

She hasn’t done that in … ever. In heaven’s Throne Room, all of her songs were full of intention, and a complete awareness of each and every note and nuance. And after God left, she didn’t sing again until Jack was dying.

She’s never, ever, sung to herself without noticing that she’s doing it.

She tells Castiel as much, and frowns. “Is this another side-effect of being ruled by my vessel?” she demands, worried. “Do humans sing without realizing it?”

“Well, yes,” says Castiel, after a moment, “but it’s not a bad thing. I’ve found that it generally means that they are happy.”

Makael considers this. She is comfortable in the chair, which is just the right size for her to tuck up her feet up into, the way she likes to. And she’s always enjoyed the color red—she finds it to be such a pleasing spectrum of light. She’s wearing her own clothes again, rather than ones borrowed from Jack (she retrieved all that she could while visiting her Room). They fit her well, and she finds that this matters to her on some deeper level than she’d expected.

She’s also currently deep into a book about Hebraic angelic lore, which has some insights into archangels that might, perhaps, prove useful. So she’s been taking notes as she’s been going, her pen moving smoothly across the pad of paper Sam gave her earlier. She likes the pen—it’s an old one that uses real ink, and she discovered it when digging around in the archives. The nib is engraved with fine, swirling lines, and she likes the way the ink settles into the paper as she writes.

“Happy.” She says the word out loud, tasting it on her tongue. She feels the warmth in her chest, feels it expand down to her toes. “I think, Brother, that you are right.”

And then she remembers the Empty, what it told Castiel, and when she looks into his blue eyes she knows that he’s remembering it, too. In the abstract, she’d known while watching the episode that it was a terrible thing, what the Empty had sentenced him to. But now …

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her chest now squeezing tight with sorrow.

The smile that Castiel gives her breaks her heart. “Don’t be,” he says. “I’m so glad that you _can_ experience it without fear. Nor should you feel any guilt, Sister. Happiness is rare, and beautiful, and I am glad for you.”

At first, Makael does feel guilty about experiencing such happiness when things around her are so dire … when she’s in the midst of doing her damndest to fulfil her vow to Dean: _You’re not alone in this. I’m here, and I’m going to do everything I can to help you._ It seems at odds with the way things ought to be, to feel happiness when you are racing the clock to save someone you care about.

But she can’t help how she feels—especially when her grace is running so low, and her emotions are consequently heightened and … humanized. And she doesn’t know how long any of this will last. How long she’ll be able to call the Bunker home, how long it will be before things come to a head with Michael, or even if she’ll be able to feel happiness like this after her grace is fully recovered. So she decides, after some consideration, to put aside her guilt and allow herself to simply experience the happiness.

It’s quiet in the Bunker. Sam has discreetly talked to all of the AU hunters, and they’re now meeting and organizing off-site. Dean hasn’t said anything, but Makael’s noticed that it seems to be worse for him when things are hectic and busy. She’s glad that Sam has intuited the same thing, and taken steps to remedy the situation and make things easier for his brother.

She’s experiencing less hunger every day, but Dean has taken it on himself to show Makael the full range of culinary experiences while she can still enjoy the flavors of food. Many times that means takeout, but sometimes Dean cooks, and that’s one of Makael’s favorite things. Dean whipping up a burger, or making taquitos and tamales, or taste-testing John Winchester’s kitchen-sink stew, is something to behold. He settles into the rhythm of _making_ , of creating something from scratch, and a contentedness emanates from him that isn’t often there otherwise.

So Makael takes to stationing herself in the kitchen while Dean cooks, so she can watch him out of the corner of her eye while she goes over whatever stack of files or book she’s currently engaged with. And Dean notices, and soon he’s engaged her as his sous-chef: chopping up this, grating that, retrieving measuring cups, or spatulas, or turning on the oven.

Makael quickly learns why cooking makes Dean so cheerful. There’s something incredibly soothing about the repetitiousness of chopping, cutting, and measuring, about following a recipe and knowing that the outcome is assured: deliciousness that can be shared with the rest of their companions.

It’s during one of these cooking sessions that they make the discovery.

Makael’s chopping up celery for the soup that Dean’s making, and Dean’s at the stovetop, adding spices to the broth, when all of a sudden he goes very still. It takes her a moment to notice, busy as she is with trying to make sure the bits of celery she’s slicing are of a similar size. She finally looks up to see that Dean’s lightly gripping the counter, his head tilted slightly to one side, shoulders slack. The soft melody she’s been humming falters.

“Dean?”

He turns, slowly, and his green eyes are wide.

“It stopped,” he says, sounding breathless.

Makael frowns. “What stopped?” Her eyes dart around the kitchen, looking for something that should … doing something … and isn’t.

“The pounding in my head,” he says. “It stopped just now.”

“Oh.” It takes Makael a beat to reframe the situation in her mind to something that is non-culinary-related. “Is that … is that a good thing?”

“Hell yeah, it’s a good thing! It’s been going non-stop for days.” Dean lets out a breath, closes his eyes. “Fuck. I’d gotten so used to the racket he makes that I’d forgotten what quiet feels like. This is _incredible_.”

Makael is glad that Dean is able to enjoy it, though anything that’s a change regarding Michael makes her feel anxious. “I think I’ll just let Sam know.”

Dean nods with his eyes still closed, a blissed-out expression on his face.

But by the time she’s found Sam and returned with him to the kitchen, Dean’s sitting slumped over the kitchen table with his head in his hands. “Never mind,” he groans when they approach. “He’s at it again. Temporary respite.”

Sam takes in his brother’s posture and lets out a slow breath. “I’m sorry, Dean,” he says. After a moment, he adds, “I guess the only good thing is that it’s not any worse. Right?”

Dean raises his head to glare at his brother. “Oh, no. Not worse at all. Just the same screaming and bashing against my cranium that’s been going on twenty-four-seven for frigging _weeks_ now, man.”

“Right.” The corners of Sam’s eyes tighten with concern. “Right. Of course. I, uh … I’ll get back to the research.”

Dean drops his head back into his hands, waves a hand vaguely in acknowledgement. Sam exchanges a look with Makael, then scrubs a hand over his jaw and leaves.

“Do you want me to keep going with the soup, Dean?” asks Makael.

“Yeah. Please.” Dean doesn’t look up, and his voice is muffled. “Just … just follow the recipe. Lemme know if you have any questions.”

“All right.”

Makael checks on the broth, turns down the burner, and returns to carefully chopping the celery. When she’s done with that, she dumps them into the broth, and begins peeling potatoes. At some point, she starts humming again. Ever since her road trip, Makael’s been eagerly taking every opportunity she has to expand her knowledge of human music, often listening through headphones on her laptop as she does her research. She’s recently discovered that the rolling swing of ballads is one of her favorite song forms, and as she winds up “Oh Danny Boy,” she switches seamlessly into “Have a Little Faith in Me.” She doesn’t bother with the words, she just sings the melody as she washes the potatoes and starts cutting them up into cubes.

“Holy shit.”

When she last glanced in his direction, Dean had his eyes closed and was slowly rubbing his temples, his shoulders sagging forward, his entire posture telegraphing his weariness. When she looks now, however, he’s sitting bolt upright, and his eyes are like saucers.

“It’s you,” he murmurs.

Makael looks at him uncomprehendingly. “It’s me what?” she demands.

“It’s your _singing_ ,” he says, softly. “That’s what’s shutting him up. Holy frigging shit, Em.”

They exchange a long look, and then Dean is hollering at the top of his lungs. “Sam, get the hell in here! We’ve figured it out.”

Seconds later, Sam is hurrying into the kitchen, his brows furrowed. “Figured what out?” he demands.

“Second-best thing the kicking Michael out of my head. We’ve figured out how to shut him up.” Dean’s grin is almost manic, he’s so excited.

Sam’s eyes slide between the two of them, his confusion apparent in.

“It’s Makael—her _singing_. She was humming before, when it stopped, and again now, and it stopped again. Whatever it is about her voice, it seems to calm him down.” Dean’s eyes widen further. “You know, that whole, ‘music tames the savage beast’ thing. She’s friggin’ _doing_ it, man.”

“Breast,” says Sam, distractedly, as he’s computing this new information.

“What?” Dean stares at his brother. His gaze slips furtively to Makael’s chest, and then back to his brother, and he curls his lip. “Dude, that’s inappropriate.”

“What?”

Sam stares at Dean in confusion, and Dean widens his eyes expressively and tilts his head in Makael’s direction as he mouths, “Not cool.”

Sam drops his head and lets out a huff of laughter as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s, ‘music tames the savage breast’. That’s the original quote. From William Congreve.”

“Oh.” Dean makes his _fair enough_ face, and then he snorts. “You are such a nerd.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “People get it wrong because, well, music really does soothe savage beasts.” He’s getting excited, now, too—throws himself onto one of the stools opposite Dean. “Like Orpheus and his lyre. I mean, he could charm birds, animals, could divert the course of rivers—he even had the power to charm the god Hades with his music. And Orpheus’ myth is just one of many about the power of music to tame creatures—there’s the Pied Piper, a libretto based on Mozart’s _The Magic Flute_ —even Scandinavian kulning, which calls in animals from pasture at the end of the day. And scientific studies have shown that dogs are more relaxed in their kennels and cows produce more milk when they listen to calming and classical music.”

“I don’t want to produce milk, Sam,” interjects Dean, sighing. “I just want Michael to shut up. Or at least quiet down.”

Sam’s eyes shift to Makael. “We need to test this out. Is it any kind of music, or something specific about what you were just singing? Does it have to be in person, or—or would a recording of your voice work? And, I mean, will it last. It—it could just be temporary, Dean. He might get tired of it, or figure out how to resist whatever it’s doing—”

“Always looking on the bright side,” says Dean, narrowing his eyes at his brother. “Look, I don’t care if it lasts. It’s helping _right now_.”

The remainder of the day is spent figuring out the answers to Sam’s questions. Turns out, it doesn’t matter what Makael sings—it’s just something about the quality of her voice that seems to still Michael’s continuous raging.

“That actually makes a lot of sense,” says Castiel, as they sit around a table in the library.

“You’ve heard of Sodom and Gomorrah, Megiddo and Dothan?”

“Uh, the first two,” says Dean. “Not the Mega-whatever or the Zohan.”

Castiel arches a brow. “Exactly. God called off the smiting on those cities after spending some time in the Throne Room with the choir. He was _just_ as angry about them as he was about Sodom and Gomorrah—although not for the reasons that are depicted in your Bible.”

“Wait, so you’re saying that God went to the listen to the heavenly choir to calm himself down when he got mad?” says Sam incredulously.

“I think he preferred the term, ‘wrathful.’ But yes.”

“And it worked?”

“Well, yes, obviously. There’s a reason there are so few recorded mass-smitings in history.”

Everyone’s eyes turn to Makael.

“So, her voice helped the Big Guy chill out,” says Dean.

Castiel nods, and Sam and Dean exchange a look.

“Keep in mind,” cautions Makael, “that was my _true_ voice. This is just what I can manage in this vessel. So, it’s more limited—in every way.”

“Yeah, well, limited or not,” says Dean, “it’s _working_.”

After some tests, they discover that recordings do help, but not as much, and sound quality seems to really matter. Within minutes, Sam is ordering state-of-the-art recording equipment and getting it overnighted to Lebanon. Within a half-hour, he’s got a five-star-rated recording program downloaded to Makael’s laptop, and is showing her how to use it.

“I guess this means that by this time tomorrow, you’re going to be a recording artist, Em,” says Sam as he leans next to her with one arm braced on the table, picking up Dean’s nickname for her and integrating it seamlessly into his own speech.

Happiness bubbles, blossoms, and settles deep into Makael’s being.

Dinner that night ends up being Chinese food, instead of the soup and grilled cheese Dean was planning. Makael doesn’t feel the least disappointed. To know that she’s _helping_ , that she’s making a difference when Dean has been so clearly struggling—it means everything. Especially when Sam takes her aside toward the end of the evening and says to her, very quietly, “This could make a big difference for my brother, Makael. Thank you,” and proceeds to envelop her in a Sam-sized hug.

Later that night, as Makael is preparing to go to bed, there’s a knock on the door. She looks up to see Dean standing in the doorway, clad in black sleeping pants and a red henley and looking … awkward.

“Hey,” he says, rubbing his hand through his hair as he speaks, “uh, I was wondering … Michael’s acting back up again, and I could _really_ use some shut eye—”

“You’d like me to sing you to sleep?”

There’s a curious combination of relief and embarrassment that plays across Dean’s face. “Uh, yeah. I mean, if you don’t mind …”

“Of course not.”

Dean flashes her a quick, bright smile, and then makes his way back down the hall, with Makael in tow. When he gets to his room, he stops in the middle of the space and says, “Is this weird? I’m sorry if it’s weird.”

Makael shakes her head. “It’s not weird at all, Dean,” she says. Her need for sleep has been lessening, but she still remembers the fatigue that plagued her at the beginning of her stay—how all-consuming it was, how she craved it after she got used to the unsettling business of falling asleep. Of course Dean is exhausted after all this time with Michael pounding on the door in his head, and of course he’s desperate to get real, quiet sleep.

He nods, looking unconvinced, and then drags a rolling chair from the desk in the corner closest to the door next to the bed. He turns on the bedside lamp, then looks uncertainly up at the bright overhead light. Makael flips off the lightswitch. The room darkens around them, except for the golden pool of light by the bedside, as she says, succinctly, “Castiel told me that lower levels of light are more conducive to entering the sleep cycle.” She makes her way over to the rolling chair and has a seat.

“Right. Yeah. Of course.”

Dean lies down, on top of the covers, his arms by his side, staring straight up at the ceiling. After a second, he gets up, pulls down the covers, and lies back down, pulling them up over him.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like me to sing, Dean?” asks Makael.

Dean tilts his head slightly away from Makael, looking for a moment almost as if he is shy. “Uh, yeah. Do you know ‘Hey Jude,’ by The Beatles?”

Makael nods. “At the insurance agency where I worked after the Great Fall, one of my coworkers was a fan of The Beatles, and always used to have their music playing at his desk, on low. I know it.”

Dean tilts his head toward her now, and frowns slightly. “You worked at an insurance agency?” he says.

She nods. “At the main desk, for a while. They were a little desperate for hires and weren’t looking for people with much experience.”

“Huh. That’s so … normal,” he says, after a moment.

Makael smiles. “That’s kindof what I was going for, Dean.”

He returns her smile. “I suppose Cas worked at a gas station for a while,” he says, consideringly. “He really seemed to enjoy it.”

Makael nods. “There’s something very gratifying about discovering that you can do something other than what you were originally designed for,” she says. “Especially when you’re told you are actually _good_ at it.”

Dean nods, thoughtfully. Then he says, very quietly, “My mom used to sing ‘Hey Jude’ to me when I couldn’t sleep.”

Makael remembers that, but only now does she realize what it means that he’s asked her to sing it to him, now.

_Comfort_ , she thinks to herself. Emotional comfort is so important for a human’s wellbeing. For the wellbeing of all creatures, she’s coming to understand.

“All right,” she says. “And Dean? If you wake up in the night, come and find me again. I’m not needing as much rest as I was at first, now that my grace is starting to recharge.”  
Dean nods, and Makael takes a breath. Her low, sweet voice fills the room with the simple melody:

_Hey Jude, don't make it bad_   
_Take a sad song and make it better_   
_Remember to let her into your heart_   
_Then you can start to make it better_

Dean’s eyes have closed before she’d reached the second verse, and by the time she transitions into the bridge, his breathing is starting to deepen. She can’t help but sing her heart, and feels her eyelids begin to prick as she sings the words; it hurts to see Dean trying to carry the weight of Death’s revelations on his own. He hasn’t even spoken to her about it since that night.

_… And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain_   
_Don't carry the world upon your shoulders_   
_For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool_   
_By making his world a little colder_

Dean’s out cold by the time she reaches the end refrain, snoring lightly. He shifts in his sleep, wiggling down into the memory foam as if he would burrow into it, if he could. She smiles, but continues on, her voice echoing softly through the corridors.

_Nah nah nah nah-nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah-nah, hey Jude_

When the last line has faded, she waits several minutes, watching Dean’s face carefully for any signs of returning distress. But his face remains smooth, looking younger, and somehow vulnerable, in his sleep. She reaches over, and carefully turns off the lamp, then rises to her feet.

“Goodnight, Dean,” she whispers from the doorway, and shuts the door quietly behind her.

Dean slumbers on, dreamless.

**END SCENE.**

 

_**Notes:**_  
1) **Titles:** I’ve started to notice that there’s a bit of a “B” theme going on here with titles for the vignettes from the Bunker. This wasn’t intentional, but now I’m rolling with it. Hence, this entry was entitled, “Ballad.” Ballad is a loose term that can apply to either poems or songs, and can include several different rhyme schemes and genres of music, from a storytelling song to any slow love song. All the songs mentioned in this entry (“Oh Danny Boy,” “Have a Little Faith in Me,” and “Hey Jude”) have been referred to as ballads. I like all these songs because they have a nice, rolling swing to them, that I personally identify with ballads.  
2) **Allies:** We know from the timing of airing that the episode “Damaged Goods” takes place sometime around Dean’s birthday (January 24th), so there’s been almost exactly a month between this episode and the events of “Nihilism” (which takes place in the early hours of Christmas Day). At the beginning of “Damaged Goods,” we see Sam telling Dean about how he is going “ _back_ through _The Book of Jubilees_ ” (emphasis mine) to see if he can find anything about Michael, and at the end of the episode Dean says, “Sam you’ve tried. Cas has tried. Jack… And I love you for trying.” So there’s an indication that there has been a lot happening behind the scenes to try to help Dean, so much so that they are going back over information they’ve already pored over. But we don’t get to see or hear anything about the work they’ve done, which is why I thought it would be fun to mention something about it at the beginning of this fic. I had a lot of fun thinking up old allies and acquaintances who might be helpful, and really enjoyed referring to Aaron Bass (8.13 “Everyone Hates Hitler” and 12.05 “The One You’ve Been Waiting For”), Maritza (9.13 “The Purge”), and Ophelia Avila (13.17 “The Thing”).  
3) **More on the Anzû Tablet:** It’s fairly well-known that Hitler was obsessed with the occult and tried to get his hands on items associated with the supernatural from around the world—although it is completely fictional, this is how Castiel’s Anzû tablet would have ended up in Berlin during WWII. However, near the end of the war, many Nazi items and persons were smuggled to South America—particularly Argentina. This is why Aaron is looking into Argentinian connections, and why Dean thinks that knowing someone on the same continent (Maritza) might come in handy.  
4) **Food:** All of the meals that Dean makes for Makael have been cooked by him before in the show. In 8.14, “Trial and Error,” Dean feeds Sam his first meal cooked in the Bunker’s kitchen soon after they’ve moved in: burgers (which Sam admits are really good). In 10.23, “Brother’s Keeper,” Dean offers Death quesos, taquitos, and tomales, bragging that they are “Homemade by yours truly.” In 8.21, “The Great Escapist,” when Sam is suffering from the trials that are required to close the gates of Hell, Dean makes him “John Winchester’s famous cure-all kitchen sink stew.” So it makes sense to me that cooking would be something that Dean would enjoy sharing with Makael, and that he’d find it grounding as he struggles.  
5) **“Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast”:** So I actually did not know that it was “breast” and not “beast” until I was doing research for this little fic. And as soon as I discovered that “beast” is a misquote, of course I needed to have it be a Sam and Dean moment. I also had a lot of fun re-finding instances of music influencing animals, both fictional/mythical and real. Orpheus and the Pied Piper are fairly well-known. If you’re not familiar with it, the libretto based on Mozart’s _The Magic Flute_ that Sam refers to is by Emanuel Schikaneder. In it, the hero, Tomino, plays a magic flute to protect himself from wild animals, who come out of their dens and lay down at his feet. As for the real-world stuff: if you have never heard of Scandinavian kulning, _definitely_ YouTube that shit (Jonna Jinton has some incredible videos). It is insanely beautiful and haunting traditional music, used for centuries by farmers to literally call their animals in from miles away. The scientific studies that Sam mentions are also real. The one on dogs was conducted by researchers from Colorado State University, and was published in The _Journal of Veterinary Behavior_ in 2012. As someone who’s done work in the dog rescue world, I’ve seen this research put into practice and witnessed the positive impact classical music can have on kenneled dogs. The information about cows is based on a 2001 study by the University of Leicester.  
6) **Sodom and Gomorrah:** This biblical disaster has been mentioned before in _Supernatural_ (6.03 “The Third Man,” and 11.10 “The Devil in the Details”), so I felt it was a safe event to reference again. Cas’ line, “He was _just_ as angry about them as he was about Sodom and Gomorrah—although not for the reasons that are depicted in your Bible” is a reference to an actual line of his in 5.06, “I Believe the Children Are Our Future,” when he says, “Your Bible gets more wrong than it does right.” Had fun making a little nod there to the canon. :) Also, Megiddo and Dothan were two towns that existed in the era of the Hebraic patriarchs (which is also when Sodom and Gomorrah existed), but were located closer to the Mediterranean Sea than the location where scholars think Sodom and Gomorrah may have existed. Dean’s line, “Not the Mega-whatever or the Zohan” is totally a reference to _You Don’t Mess With the Zohan_ , which is such a freaking Dean movie.  
7) **Hey Jude:** In 5.13 “The Song Remains the Same,” when Sam and Dean go back in time to stop Anna from killing their parents, Dean tells his Mom, “Our names are Dean and Sam Winchester. We're named after your parents. When I would get sick, you would make me tomato-rice soup, because that's what your mom made you. And instead of a lullaby, you would sing ‘Hey Jude’, 'cause that's your favorite Beatles song.” So that’s where this comes from—and I felt that the lyrics were incredibly relevant to the situation Dean is in right now.

That’s it. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
